


there are many names in history (none of them ours)

by Prevalent_Masters



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, As Usual There Is A Protest, Background Combeferre/Courfeyrac, Civic Engagement, Dreamsharing, F/M, Light Angst, M/M, Minor Joly/Bossuet Laigle/Musichetta, One of those where you don't see a certain color until you meet your soulmate, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:00:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24020968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prevalent_Masters/pseuds/Prevalent_Masters
Summary: She's beautiful—tall, rosy cheeks, blue eyes, and a curtain of yellow-blond hair nearly hiding her face. She comes in looking slightly overwhelmed at the sight of their rambunctious group, following Eponine, and then their eyes catch and he knows. He knows it in the way she freezes, eyes flicking around the room, expression morphing into one of awe. He knows it when her eyes catch on the photograph on the wall behind him—the sunset, one of his favorites—and she looks like she’s never seen anything like it before. He knows it when she looks back at him and takes a single step forward, and then—And then, well, he faints.Which is kind of an embarrassing way to meet your soulmate for the first time.
Relationships: Cosette Fauchelevent/Marius Pontmercy, Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 30
Collections: Les Mis Big Bang: Quarantine Edition





	there are many names in history (none of them ours)

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my contribution to the Les Mis Quarantine Big Bang! We worked with the prompts 'complementary colors' and 'reunion'. Thanks to [Sam](https://caluette.tumblr.com/) for the amazing art and wonderful collab and [Kay](https://grande-air.tumblr.com/) for the beta and the title inspo! Thanks to the mods and organizers of this project, too!
> 
> Warnings: Casual alcohol consumption, mentions of disordered eating, injury descriptions, minor descriptions of violence at a rally and references to canon violence and deaths.

“He whom love touches not walks in darkness.”

-Plato, _The Symposium_

The sky, he’s told, is what he’s really missing out on. He can’t imagine the way it looks, clear and bright, peeking timid behind wispy clouds, contrasting against thunderheads as they build on a horizon. Water’s a close second—he’s really missing out on the sight of a mountain lake, on the reach of the ocean. But what is the color of water but a reflection of the sky?

He supposes it must be a sight, but it’s difficult to miss something you’ve never seen. He can imagine the color blue, somewhere settled between the mossy green of his grandfather’s house and the violet of crocuses in the spring. His brain fills in the blanks. And everyone, after all, is missing a color—he thinks he would miss orange the most, not the abrasive neon of worksites or construction zones, but the soft orange of a peach, the blaze of a sunset. Everyone who’s born seeing blue seems to think it would be the worst color to be without. 

Well, he tells people, he’ll see it someday. He should. 87% of the population ends their life seeing the full color spectrum. Marius is unlucky, but surely he’s not unlucky enough to be part of that 13% who never finds their soulmate.

He doesn’t like to think about that much. He was stressed enough last year, when his soulmate didn’t pop up for the whole first year of university. Many find their soulmate sometime in school, most of them during university. That’s when you’re interacting with the most diverse group of people you’ll probably ever see. Nevermind he’s still got three years to go, it still stresses him out he hasn’t found them yet.

“It’ll come,” Courfeyrac always soothes him when he starts to panic. Easy for him to say. He’s known his soulmate since he was six years old, when Combeferre’s family moved next door. According to Courfeyrac, Combeferre slid out of the backseat of his family’s car, pointed at Courfeyrac’s shirt, and said “that must be yellow”. There hadn’t been anything purple around in the dead of winter, but Courfeyrac knew anyway. He felt it down to his bones. They’ve been inseparable ever since, best friends to lovers to casually mentioning their eventual marriage every so often (“Not until we’re 25, though,” Courfeyrac always says, cheerful and assured, “We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves.”). He doesn’t know what it’s like to still be waiting. 

It’s not like he’s alone, though. Of their little group of tight-knit friends, only Combeferre and Courferyrac and Joly, Musichetta and Bossuet have found each other. Jehan was born seeing the full spectrum of color—a rare case in which a person doesn’t have a designated soulmate, which might be sad for someone who isn’t Jehan, who instead spreads their love to every person who crosses their path—and a few years ago Bahorel suddenly saw the color green while hiking alone, the forest coming into crushing, brutal color around him and no one else on the trail. A dead soulmate. Everyone’s worst fear. He never talks about it, they all avoid the subject. 

The rest of them are still searching.

On the first day of the new semester he’s standing nervously outside the coffee shop on campus while Enjolras grabs his usual quad shot, carefully watching the streams of students pass by. This is the first day of the year everyone’s on campus together, the air ripe with possibility. He’s not the only one casting his eyes around desperately. Everyone’s looking for someone else, some stranger walking by who will change their life.

Enjolras joins him, thermos in hand, dark circles already stark under his eyes despite the fact they haven’t even started the semester yet. “Let’s go.”

“Class doesn’t start for another twenty minutes,” Marius replies, keen to stand outside the coffee shop for a few minutes longer. They’re right on the main drag of campus here. Lots of people passing by. Prime spot.

“Gotta get a good seat,” Enjolras mutters absentmindedly, already turning towards the lecture hall where their Econ for Nonmajors 8 AM is. Marius doesn’t mind economics on principle, but economics at 8 AM just sounds bad. At least he’s stuck there with Enjolras. He sighs and follows him to class, eyes caught on every passerby. 

As he expected, the lecture hall is almost empty when they arrive. The professor is messing around with the computer at the lectern and other overachievers are crowding the first few rows. Enjolras leads them further away—about ten rows up, dead center, his calculated ideal spot for lecture classes. Close enough to ask questions, far enough away to not get a headache staring at the powerpoint presentations. Enjolras has this all down to a science. Marius just follows along.

“So,” Enjolras says after they settle down, passing over a thick stack of papers. “This is a list of every student organization active on campus this year, with descriptions. It’s on the Google Drive, too, but I figured you might want to highlight some stuff so I just went ahead and printed it out. Read it through, highlight any group that might be interested in collaborating with us this year, and bring it to the first meeting.”

Marius takes the stack of paper, dread settling in his stomach. “Enjolras, the first meeting is on Wednesday. There’s like two hundred student groups to go through.”

Enjolras waves his hand. “We won’t have any homework yet. You’ll have time. Besides, building a coalition to work with this year is the most important thing we have to do if we want to see success, and you said that’s what you were interested in helping with most.”

“Well yeah, but I—” he starts to protest, but arguing with Enjolras is futile. He should know that by now, a year into their friendship. Enjolras is bright and charming and passionate and wonderful and would die for his friends, but he’s also terrible and pushy and annoying and so goddamn stubborn sometimes Marius wants to strangle him. He was terrified of him for the first few months he knew him, after Courfeyrac dragged him to his first Les Amis meeting, and, though that terror has now softened into a mix of annoyance, intimidation, and exasperated fondness, he still can’t argue with him to save his life. Enjolras could debate anyone to death; Marius isn’t sure why he’s doing political science instead of law. He could annihilate anyone in a courtroom. He sighs and slips the papers into his backpack.

Enjolras starts talking about his plans for the first meeting of the year and Marius zones out, despite himself. It’s still only 7:55 in the morning and he barely slept the night before from a mixture of excitement and fear and the drone of Enjolras’ voice against the buzz of other students...he can’t pay attention. Instead, he watches the stream of people entering the lecture hall, girls shrieking and embracing when they recognize each other, guys slapping each other on the backs, the freshmen and loners gingerly picking their way up to the seats at the top where they won’t be as noticeable. His gaze skips over everyone, person after person. He recognizes a few, but most are strangers.

“Are you listening to me, Marius?” Enjolras asks, and he jumps.

“Yeah,” he says, which is a total lie. He covers it by reaching down to pull a pencil out of his bag and does a double take when he looks down.

Weird. He was pretty sure he put on grey pants this morning, which is why he paired them with a bright red t-shirt. Only, they’re not grey anymore. They’re...like grey, but brighter. Like someone took grey and injected it with a little green and a little purple, the bright flash hinted at in a hummingbird’s plumage when it takes off and the light hits it in just the right way—

Blue, he realizes. _Blue jeans_. 

He’s seeing blue.

He flicks his eyes over to Enjolras. Sure enough, his pants, grey to Marius’ eyes all morning, are the same color, a little darker. In fact—at least eighty percent of the people around them wear similar pants. He looks up. The guy right in front of him is wearing a Seahawks sweatshirt and suddenly he can see the logo, the hawk’s head, variegated hues against a dark background, previously nothing but a wash of grey. His notebook cover—lighter, closer to green. The background of the powerpoint the professor just pulled up on the projector—electric, almost too bright to look at. 

“Blue,” he murmurs out loud.

Enjolras stops talking. “What?”

“I can see blue,” he says, staring straight ahead into the eye of the seahawk. 

“You can—oh my god,” Enjolras says, the realization finally hitting. It hits Marius at approximately the same time. He can see blue. That means something.

That means his soulmate is in this room, and he just saw them. Either that, or they’re dead and he’s suddenly seeing their color...but no, he refuses to believe it. He’d feel _something_ , some sense of sadness or dread. He just spent the last five minutes zoned out, watching the door. He must have seen them. He twists his head around, trying to figure out if anyone near him looks like they just saw a brand new color for the first time. If he saw them, they must have seen him, right? That’s how this works, right?

“Marius,” Enjolras says loudly, grabbing his arm and shaking it so hard it hurts. “Oh my god, Marius! Your soulmate!”

“I know,” he says, oddly numb.

“They’re here!”

“I know,” he says again.

“Where?” Enjolras cranes his own neck, looking around wildly. “I don’t see anyone.”

“I don’t know,” he says. “Aren’t you supposed to just...see each other?”

Enjolras turns to him, eyes wide. “Maybe you saw them, but they didn’t see you. They’re probably sitting in front of us,” he points down at the nine rows sloping below them. Marius stares down at the rows of heads. God, what if it’s Seahawks guy? He reaches out, taps him on the shoulder. He turns around, looking bored, and raises an eyebrow.

“Yeah?” he asks. Definitely not the reaction of a soulmate.

“S-sorry,” Marius stammers. “Thought you were someone from my dorm last year.”

The guy just shakes his head and turns back around. Enjolras moves from arm to shoulder and shakes him again. “Marius! Stand up and say something! Call attention to yourself! They’ll have to look at you!”

“What?” he can feel himself blushing. “No! I don’t want people looking at me!”

Enjolras stares at him. “Seriously? This is about finding your _soulmate_.” He grabs Marius’ hand and yanks it into the air. “Hey, everybody, this guy just—”

Marius yanks his hand away. “ _St_ _op_ ,” he hisses through his teeth, and, just in time, the professor saves him, stepping up to the lectern and clearing his throat.

“Alright everyone, let’s settle down. Welcome to Economics 205 for nonmajors. If you’re not in the right place, this is your cue to leave. If you are, welcome. We’ll start by going over the syllabus, which you all should have found in an email late last week…”

Enjolras stares at him, eyebrows raised. “I’ll find them after class,” Marius whispers to him, blush still hot on his face. “I’ll stand by the door.”

Enjolras drops it, though Marius can tell he thinks he’s crazy. The rest of the class passes in a blur. He doesn’t hear anything the professor says, still flicking his eyes around the room, desperate to see someone staring back at him in awe. 

He doesn’t.

Five minutes before class ends, he quietly packs his stuff and slips out of the side door to the lecture hall. He makes his way down to the main entrance and leans up against the wall opposite, staring at the double doors. It would be difficult for anyone leaving the classroom to miss seeing him.

A few minutes later the doors open and students start pouring out. He stares at everyone and gets a few strange looks in return, but no one stops in their tracks and stares back. No one comes up to him. No one smiles at him the way he’d think a soulmate would smile. 

He’d hoped maybe they noticed him when he left, but no one comes looking, either.

There are two other entrances to the lecture hall. He figured ninety percent of the students would leave from this one, but there’s that pesky ten percent that probably didn’t.

The flow of students slows to a trickle, then stops entirely. Students waiting for the next class start going in. He slides down the wall until he’s sitting on the floor and hides his head in his hands. _Stupid_ . He should have just stood up when it happened, said something to the whole classroom like Enjolras suggested. It wouldn’t have been that weird. It’s his _soulmate_ for god’s sake. No one would have begrudged him for it, not even the professor.

Enjolras’ shoes appear in his line of sight. Bright red converse.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” he says, not looking up.

“No luck?”

“Obviously not.”

Enjolras sighs. “You should have just—”

“I know,” he interrupts, not wanting to hear Enjolras tell him his mistakes. “I know.”

A long pause. Enjolras sighs again, and a hand appears in front of his nose. “Come on. You’ve got a break before your next class, right? We can go back to my place. ‘Ferre will make you breakfast. I know you didn’t eat before class, you’ll feel better if you do.”

He sighs himself and takes Enjolras’ hand. He hoists him to his feet and pats him awkwardly on the shoulder. “You’ll find them,” he says. “We have this class all semester. They’ll see you soon. Probably next class. We can just sit in the front row.”

He nods, dejected, and follows Enjolras down the hall. He’s right. They have a whole semester. Unless his soulmate drops the class, or transfers, or _shit_ , maybe they aren’t in the class and they really did just die and now he’ll be alone forever, he’ll die alone, he’ll never meet them...

They step outside and—

 _Oh_.

He’d forgotten about the sky.

He hadn’t thought it would look like _that_. He knows what the sky looks like, but the depth of difference between grey and blue, the contrast of blue against the red brick of buildings and the green of the trees. The _clouds_. Sometimes he could see the difference between clouds and the rest of the sky, if they were the dark purple of an encroaching thunderstorm, or the fluffy, sinful white of cumulus in summer. But this—thin whispers of white, like bits of cotton candy, so delicate and high they’re almost dreams.

He feels wetness on his cheeks and lifts a hand to his eyes. He’s crying.

Beside him, Enjolras grins. “The sky?”

“Yeah,” he manages to gasp out. “I didn’t think it would look like that. I didn’t think _anything_ could look like that.”

“Wait ‘till you see the ocean,” Enjolras says, and his gaze turns wistful. “I can’t wait until I can see green.” His eyes sweep over the expanse of the quad, the lawn filled with students, the old maples and elms still carrying their heavy summer load of leaves. Marius follows his gaze and suddenly realizes how prevalent the color green is—always underfoot, always above your head. How he would miss the first flush of green leaves on trees in the spring, the shine of the sun through the leaves of his houseplants in winter. So much of Enjolras’ world is grey.

“You will soon,” he says, trying to sound reassuring, and Enjolras smiles briefly at him before turning towards home.

* * *

The night after the first day of classes she has a nightmare. She doesn’t have them that often—or she rarely remembers if she does. This, she wakes from screaming, sweating, to her roommate shaking her shoulder in an effort to wake her up.

It’s not the most auspicious beginning. It’s already been hard, these first few days so far from home, so far from her father. She’s only spent a week away from him since he adopted her when she was six, and that was at summer camp the next county over. Now she’s on the other side of the country, and it’ll be months before she can go home. Combine the homesickness with her crippling shyness and she barely looked another person in the eye the entire first day of school, besides Eponine when they met up for lunch. She should be looking around. Everyone else is. Everyone’s on the search for their soulmate, and she’s no exception. 

The possibility is almost terrifying, though. Easier to keep her head down, hair curtaining her from view.

The dream, though. The dream adds to the sense of dread tenfold, enough to make her want to cocoon in her comforter and never leave her room again. 

It’s dark. Cold—a clammy sort of cold that comes from a lack of light, like in caves or tunnels. It smells foul. Garbage and stale, standing water and something worse—human waste, the scent heavy and thick in the back of her throat. From far away, sounds filter down. Screaming. The blasts of gunshots. Running footsteps.

Running footsteps, getting closer. Splashing through the standing water, echoing. She shrinks back against the damp wall, afraid, trying to melt into the shadows. A figure emerges through the darkness.

It’s not until he’s very close—close enough to see her, though he doesn’t register her presence—that she realizes who it is. Her father. He looks older, greyer, tired. A full beard and strange clothes, like he’s dressed as some historical reenactment. He’s soaked and red stains his white shirt. Blood. 

Her heart rabbits with panic and she steps forward, reaching out to him, wanting to help. He doesn’t see her, doesn’t slow. Runs right past. Or—not past. Through her. Like she’s a ghost. 

She turns, calling his name, but no sound leaves her lips. And then she sees—he’s carrying something. Someone. Another man—young, deathly pale, eyes closed, lashes dusky against freckled cheeks. The blood’s his, not her father’s, red stains that look suspiciously like bullet wounds. It covers him, his white shirt, his pale skin, his face. His face, the planes of it dear and familiar to her, even under all that blood.

She knows him. She knows him, she loves him, and he’s dying.

She opens her mouth to call his name and—

Wakes screaming wordlessly, tangled in sweaty sheets, Eponine hovering over her looking half angry, half concerned.

She scrambles up against her headboard, away from Eponine’s hands, panting, and presses shaking hands to her face.

“What the fuck?” Eponine says. “You wouldn’t wake up. I’ve been shaking you for, like, a full minute.”

She can’t respond yet. She can’t catch her breath. She curls up against the headboard and tries to calm her heartbeat. Dimly, she hears Eponine moving away, the clink of a glass in their little sink, the sound of the faucet. 

“Here,” Eponine says above her, and she manages to reach out and grasp the glass of water. Eponine sinks down on the bed against the opposite wall and stares at her. She sips at the water, tries not to give into the nausea creeping from her stomach up her throat.

“Are you okay?” Eponine says after a few minutes of silence.

She nods, even though it’s a lie. “Just a bad dream.”

Eponine snorts. “No shit.”

“I don’t get them very often. Sorry I woke you.”

Eponine squints at her, staring like she can see right through her skin to the thoughts running through her mind. Eponine is strange like that—Cosette likes her, and they get along well. She’s a sophomore and knows the ins and outs of campus already, which Cosette is grateful for, and she seems perfectly happy to take Cosette under her wing. But the way she looks at her sometimes, like she can read her mind, like she already knows her down the core…

It’s unsettling. Especially so after the nightmare.

“It’s fine,” Eponine says eventually. Then, “It’s three AM. You should try to go back to sleep.”

She sets the water on the nightstand and slowly sinks back into the pillows. “Yeah. Thanks.”

“No problem,” Eponine says, and gets back into bed, wrapping herself in her quilt and turning away. Cosette stares at the shadows playing on the ceiling and tries to sleep. It was only a dream, she tells herself. Nothing but a nightmare, a stress dream. Her father in trouble, she unable to help. She worries over that often enough, waking and asleep.

The only thing, though—

The only thing is the other man. The man she knew in the dream. Her lips wrapped around his name as she woke.

She knew him. But she’s positive she’s never seen his face before. She spends hours, as night bleeds into morning, running through every face she knows, friends and acquaintances from high school, her fathers’ students, people she knew from soccer and summer camp and before—stretching her mind back to when she was very young, in foster care, faces she barely remembers.

She knows she’s never seen him before.

Everyone you see in your dreams is someone you’ve met before, someone you’ve seen. Usually someone you know, so your subconscious can recreate the details of their faces and bring them to life. Your mind never makes up a face you’ve never seen. Sometimes, in dreams, you see people with blank or blurry faces, but never a face you don’t know.

She can picture his face perfectly. Could draw a sketch of it in a few minutes. It was clear, detailed, _known_.

But she’s never seen it before. Not once.

So how could she dream him?

* * *

She doesn’t go to class for the next two days. It’s not the most auspicious start to her college career, but she can’t help it. The morning after the nightmare she woke up, opened her laptop, and googled “dream meanings”; and she’s been deep in an internet hole ever since. 

On Wednesday afternoon Eponine gets home, slams the door, and surveys her with her hands on her hips. Cosette looks up at her from her blanket burrito. She hasn’t showered in two days, she knows she has deep dark circles, she hasn’t even left her bed to pee in the last five hours. Her bedside table is piled with dirty mugs, cereal bowls, and protein bar wrappers. 

The last two days have not been her finest.

“Okay,” Eponine says. “I was letting you get away with this because it’s just been syllabus days up to now, but this is getting pathetic.”

Cosette takes the last gulp of cold tea in her mug and doesn’t say anything.

Eponine strides across the room, closes her laptop in the middle of the current video (7 Common Dream Meanings You Should NEVER Ignore), and pulls the blanket away from Cosette’s shoulders. 

“Hey!” she cries, reaching out to tug the blanket away from Eponine. Eponine holds fast. “Stop it!”

“No,” Eponine says. “You need to get out of bed, get into a shower, and leave this room. Look, I told you I’d introduce you to people here, right? Well, tonight’s the first meeting of that social justice group I’m a part of. Remember? Lots of bleeding heart liberals and idealistic views of a utopian future? You’ll fit right in. Plus, they’re always held at the best coffeeshop in town. You have an hour to get ready.”

“I’m not a bleeding heart liberal,” Cosette grumbles, but she gets out of bed anyway. Eponine rolls her eyes and flops on her bed. “One hour,” she says, and points towards the bathroom. 

So that’s how Cosette ends up trailing her to the semester’s first Les Amis meeting. The group is so fabled she managed to hear about them, see flyers for their meetings, and notice the remnants of their last action (a banner drop over main hall, where a piece of the banner still waves in the breeze from one of the high turrets) in just one day of classes. The meetings are held off campus because technically they’re not allowed to exist as a student group thanks to multiple sit-ins and “disruptive” marches that led to members getting arrested. Cosette isn’t quite sure she’s ready to get mixed up in whatever wild stunts this group is planning for her first semester of college, but evidently Eponine is best friends with most of the people in the group and Cosette’s willing to do whatever it takes to make friends that requires the least amount of effort. 

Eponine’s right that it’s a cute cafe—the windows are fogged up from the warmth inside against the drizzly day and she can see warm lighting, wooden tables, mismatched chairs, and a large pastry case. Still, she hesitates before they walk in.

Eponine turns and smiles at her, sets a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry,” she says, “Just because you come to a meeting doesn’t mean you’re gonna get roped into anything you’re uncomfortable with. I just want you to meet my friends. I really think you’re meant to be here.”

A strange turn of phrase, but it gets her through the door.

It’s obvious who the group is the minute they walk in. A large cluster of college-age kids takes up four tables at the center of the room, talking, laughing, and yelling at each other good-naturedly. There’s a platter of pastries on the center table, flyers scattered here and there, and a kid standing on a chair reciting a sonnet to the guy below him, who’s pretending to swoon. They’re loud, excited, and just very... _there_. 

Eponine waves. “Hi, all!”

They all turn towards them, waving and greeting Eponine like the old friends they are. One man, whose back was to the door, turns to face them, grinning, and the loud voices around her go silent, her vision tunneling until he’s all she can see.

The man from her dream.

Whole and healthy, bloodstains gone and skin flushed instead of deathly pale, he’s still unmistakable. The dark hair, the green eyes, the long eyelashes and the scattering of freckles across his nose.

The man from her dreams is wearing socks in a garish color, somewhere between yellow and red, but somehow brighter than either. A color she’s never noticed before. And the person next to him, she realizes, has a tye-dyed shirt on, which she hadn’t realized at first, white ribboned with that same color, albeit a softer hue, faded from many washings. And a flower in their hair, a few shades deeper than yellow. 

Her eyes flick to the wall behind them, the room suddenly thrown into deeper warmth, the shine of the lights on wooden tabletops taking on a depth she’s never seen before. On the wall, a photograph jumps out. A sunset over the ocean, pink and purple and blue and gold, and—

—and orange, tying it all together, creating an artist’s pallet in the sky from blue to orange and everything in between, reflecting off the waves.

She’d never understood what was so beautiful about sunsets. 

Her gaze flicks back to the man from her dreams, who’s staring at her now, mouth open. 

She takes a step forward.

He turns paper white and falls out of his chair.

* * *

_She’s beautiful_ , is the first thing he thinks when the woman walks through the door, before the entire world stops around him.

She is—tall, rosy cheeks, blue eyes, and a curtain of yellow-blond hair nearly hiding her face. She comes in looking slightly overwhelmed at the sight of their rambunctious group, following Eponine, and then their eyes catch and he _knows_. He knows it in the way she freezes, eyes flicking around the room, expression morphing into one of awe. He knows it when her eyes catch on the photograph on the wall behind him—the sunset, one of his favorites—and she looks like she’s never seen anything like it before. He knows it when she looks back at him and takes a single step forward, and then—

And then, well, he faints.

Which is kind of an embarrassing way to meet your soulmate for the first time.

He comes to mere seconds later, Jehan leaning over him patting his face and the girl—his _soulmate_ —standing above him, looking terrified. 

“Low blood pressure,” he croaks, and levers himself up on his elbows. “Happens all the time.”

“Did you eat enough today?” Jehan asks, pressing a scone into his hand. 

“Probably not,” he mumbles, fighting dizziness and leaning back against the leg of the table. His friends are all looking at him, concerned, but he only has eyes for his soulmate, hovering in front of him like she’s not sure she should come any closer.

“Are you in Econ for Nonmajors? Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 8 AM?”

Hesitantly, she nods.

“What’s your name?” he whispers. He can hear his heart beating, blood pounding in his ears.

“Cosette,” she says softly. 

“Cosette,” he repeats, and it feels right, like his lips are meant to shape around her name, his tongue created to say it. 

“What’s yours?”

“Marius.”

“Marius,” she says, and _god_ , his name in her voice sends chills down his spine. “Yeah, that sounds right.”

He’s about to ask what that’s supposed to mean when Courfeyrac says, loudly, “Wait...you just found your _soulmate_?” and his friends erupt around him. Enjolras points at Cosette with narrowed eyes and says “I _saw_ you on Monday!”, Joly and Jehan both give her a hug at the same time, Courfeyrac, who was still standing on the chair he’d climbed on to serenade Combeferre with a love poem, starts jumping up and down and whooping, and Eponine rolls her eyes and says “Jesus Christ, of _course_ it’s fucking _you_. Why is my life like this.” Musichetta, with thunder in her expression, moves out from behind the counter and stalks towards them.

“I’m going to ban you from meeting here if you don’t all _control yourselves_ ,” she hisses, and Courfeyrac jumps down from his chair, grabs her, and spins her in an energetic two-step while shouting, “Marius just found his _soulmate_ , don’t be a grump!” That statement turns Musichetta’s frown to a smile, and then she’s turning to them and shouting “Congratulations!”, and someone at the next table starts clapping and then the entire room is applauding and cheering and Marius still can’t take his eyes off hers. Blue. Light blue, with a hint of purple, like the sky right before twilight—a sight he saw for the first time only two nights ago. He can see the color of her eyes and she’s his soulmate and he already loves her so much he feels like he could shatter.

He levers himself up off the floor with the help of the table, ignoring his dizziness, and crosses the distance between them in two long steps. 

“Can I touch you?” he asks against the background of his friends cheering. She nods, eyes wide, still looking shell shocked, and he lifts a hand and gently lays it on her cheek. She’s warm beneath him, real. 

“Cosette,” he says again, and she smiles suddenly, blinding and beautiful, and surges forward to wrap her arms around him. 

Every point of connection feels like a live wire, sparking. She fits in his arms right, like she belongs there.

He remembers the legends of soulmates he heard growing up. That long ago, the first humans had no sex or gender, that everyone had two sets of arms, two sets of legs, two faces. Those first humans were peaceful and content, powerful and fearless in their happiness. So powerful the gods deemed them a threat. To weaken them, the gods cut them in half, severing them so each was left with one face, two arms, two legs. They ripped their souls in two, crippling humans forever. _Each one longed for its other half, and so they would throw their arms about each other, weaving themselves together, wanting to grow together. Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature…._

The myths are true, he thinks. There, with Cosette in his arms, wound together as one, he feels whole for the first time in his life.

* * *

So this is what having a soulmate is like. Like you’ve finally found something that’s always been missing, something you lost when you were too young to remember what it was. Like the reality of it—suddenly seeing the full spectrum of colors when before a portion of the world was always in greyscale. Like feeling whole.

She loves Marius. It’s immediate and almost painful. She knows not all soulmates are destined for romantic or sexual love. Some are platonic, some are best friends, some are even siblings. But soulmates usually end up partners in every sense of the word, and she knows that’s what it will be with her and Marius. They kiss for the first time mere hours after they meet, tangled in the dark outside the Musain, rain soaking their shoulders. Then Marius pulls away, blushing, stammering about needing to get home, and it was only hours later she realized they never even exchanged phone numbers.

It’s okay, though. She gets it from Eponine, who seems to be oscillating between disgusted and pleased for them on a nearly minute by minute basis.

It’s so easy. That’s what surprises her. She doesn’t know this man, not at all, really, and yet she does. It’s like she’s known him forever, since birth, before birth, even. For entire lifetimes leading up to this moment. Existing beside him is easy, even though he’s awkward and a bit strange sometimes and still gets tongue-tied when he looks at her for too long. She matches his awkwardness with residual shyness and somehow they balance each other out. She’s strange, too—she knows she talks about her father too much for any would-be boyfriend to be comfortable with, and she makes him watch an hour long Bon Appetit video where two chefs try to make sourdough donuts the second time they hang out. He gets just as invested as she does. When he gets tongue-tied looking at her, she just pulls him down for a kiss.

Through Marius, she gets to know his friends, all of whom seem to be part of Les Amis. Eponine was right—they really are a bunch of idealists, albeit idealists who are extremely well informed and ready to fight for what they believe in. Barely two weeks into the semester, they’re already planning a march and sit-in at the capitol building to protest university tuition hikes and minimum wage freezes that were just passed by the state legislature. They’re jumping in with both feet, ready to get in trouble, ready to get _arrested_ , and once the word gets out the meetings only get bigger, attendees filling the whole cafe. 

A lot of it, she quickly understands, is down to Enjolras and his persuasive abilities. He’s good at talking, that’s for sure, but more than that she can tell he believes so painfully in everything he says, in the need for _justice_ , it’s hard not to be swayed.

“They’re taking away our _futures_ ,” he says at one meeting in late September, standing at the end of one of the tables, hands planted and staring at them all with a ferocious gaze. “We pay more and more money for education that’s meant to be state funded, we’re trapped in debt, and when we leave there are no jobs! Higher education is already reserved for the privileged — we’re all _privileged_ here, but that doesn’t mean some of us aren’t struggling to _feed ourselves_ —and meanwhile, the people making these decisions are paid off by corporations and special interests! If they set the minimum wage, make them work at those wages! See how fast it changes!”

“Yes!” Bahorel, at the next table, slams his fist down so hard mugs rattle. 

“And that isn’t even starting on the housing crisis,” Combeferre adds. “There’s no affordable housing in this city anymore, rent is going through the roof, people are losing their housing, and yet they continue to build luxury apartment condominiums and sell units off to people who don’t live and work here.”

“We’re going to show them it’s not okay,” Enjolras says. “We’re going to show them it’s _wrong_. There are protests planned throughout November, when the legislature returns from recess. We’ll be working within a larger framework — the IWW, the DSA, Sunrise, AFL, some other groups we’ve networked with in the past. I think it’s important to let those organizations take the lead, especially with the labor-related issues, but keep in mind we’re the main liaison for students. Students are being unfairly affected by these laws, especially the Department of Education funding decisions. So tell your friends! Get them involved. We’re _all_ getting screwed, and we will only win if we resist together.”

“Sign up on the email list if you’re new, or you haven’t yet!” Courfeyrac yells, waving a notebook and pencil in the air. 

“We’ll talk about on-campus efforts we can take next week,” Marius says. “We can’t do anything overt, since we’re technically banned, but we can flyer and we’re considering another banner drop if anyone would be interested in working out some logistics on that. Especially if you’re a climber who can get up the side of a building without a harness.”

After the meeting, she and Marius walk home hand in hand, wandering along the river where the trees have turned to bright flame, a display she’s never seen. Before, the green simply faded into grey. She couldn’t imagine it when people told her what it looked like—she could see some of the shades of red and yellow, but the brightest are the oranges and the golds, lighting up like fires burning in the sky. The contrast against the blue on a sunny day takes her breath away, brings tears to her eyes.

“I’ve never done anything like this,” she admits to Marius when they’re almost back to his apartment. “It kind of scares me.”

Marius squeezes her hand. “It scared me, too. I thought my grandfather would disown me when he found out what I’d gotten tangled up in.”

“He didn’t?”

Marius laughs. “I guess I haven’t told you much about him, huh? No, he didn’t. Not yet, anyway. He’s got a soft heart, under a heavy layer of conservatism and overall disappointment in how I turned out. He’s still got hope I’ll end up working for him at his corporate law firm. Also, I lied to him and told him I wasn’t going to meetings anymore.”

She looks at him, his dark hair, the freckles across his nose, the way the setting sun filters through his eyelashes. “How could anyone be disappointed in you?” 

She doesn’t realize she’s said it out loud until he turns to her, surprise written across his features and a flush creeping over his cheeks. “I—oh,” he says, ever awkward. “Thank you?”

She leans over and pecks a kiss on his cheek. She can’t help it. “You’re welcome.”

He’s too flustered to talk for a minute or two, but eventually he seems to shake it off. “Anyway,” he says, “what I meant to get at is you’ll get used to it. And besides, you don’t have to be involved in any of it if you don’t want to.”

She’s thought of that already. Thought of how disappointed her father would be if she ended up getting arrested a few months into her college career.

But then again, her father has always been a fierce defender of justice in his own way. He’s even hinted at a past that might have involved some activism himself, though he never tells her much about it. 

And Enjolras is persuasive. They’re right, after all—people are suffering, and she doesn’t want to just sit by and watch it happen.

“No,” she says, “No, I think I need to be involved. I want to be.”

He beams at her for that, and squeezes her hand tightly in his own.

When she gets home that night Eponine, Feuilly and a guy she’s never met are sprawled around their tiny table with several empty beer bottles scattered around them. Eponine glances over at her, clearly drunk, and gestures to her companions. “Feuilly you know. This is Grantaire. He doesn’t hang with the rest of us.”

The new guy waves. He’s got dark hair and dark eyes, a crooked smile, and looks like he hasn’t slept in maybe a month. “Can’t stand the idealism.”

“I get that,” she says. “It’s a bit overwhelming. Especially Enjolras.”

He rolls his eyes. “Ah, the fabled Enjolras.” He points at her, turns to Eponine. “Where’d you find her?”

Eponine rolls her eyes back. “The university brought us together through random roommate assignments.”

He turns back to her. “I like you. You, I like. Want a beer?”

She declines as politely as she can, retreating to her bed in the other room and stuffing in her headphones to drown out their increasingly loud conversation. She falls asleep on top of the covers, her chemistry book open on her lap, music still in her ears.

And dreams...

...of a dark, damp tunnel, echoing footsteps, harsh panting. Gunshots from above. Her father splashes into view, filthy and wet, blood staining his clothing. Instead of Marius slung over his shoulder, it’s her. She looks dead, hair long and bloodstained hanging down his back. She reaches a hand out and it passes through her own pale face.

She follows, trying to keep up, but her strides are slow, sluggish, like there’s an invisible barrier in front of her, blocking her path. The water grows increasingly deeper, until she’s wading hip deep, blundering into heavy objects in the dark. She can still see the pale shine of her own hair in the distance, but she’s fallen hopelessly behind. She stops, panting, a stitch in her chest, and looks down at the water. It should be too dark to see, but instead there’s a face floating right below the surface, pale and somehow bloodstained. Wild blonde hair floats like a halo around it.

Enjolras. His body floating under the surface, no bubbles escaping his lips. Dead.

She stumbles back, falling into the water and suddenly there’s no water anymore, no tunnel, no darkness. She’s on the side of a street in the bright light of day and there are bodies surrounding her—she’s lying in the midst of them, tossed on top like an afterthought. She turns her head and meets Eponine’s eyes, open and dull, dead. She sits up and something shifts off her lap. Joly, arm flopping limp and lifeless as his body falls, bloodstains over his heart. Next to him, Feuilly, skull crushed. Combeferre and Courfeyrac, curled into each other. Jehan, tattered petals of bloody flowers in their hair. Grantaire, who she’s only just met, at least six bullet wounds littered across his torso, bloodied fingers tangled in Enjolras’, who slumps against the wall of a building next to them.

She struggles to her feet, fighting free of the tangle of bodies, bile rising in her throat. 

_Cosette_.

She jumps, turning at the sound of her name, and there he is, her Marius, tears in his eyes, blood on his shirt, reaching out to her. She looks down at herself and realizes she’s holding a gun—an antique-looking pistol. Her arm rises without her control, levels the gun at Marius’ head, and pulls the trigger.

She wakes screaming, her chemistry book falling to the floor with a loud bang, sweat soaking through her t-shirt. The door flies open so hard it bangs against the wall and Eponine rushes in to the side of the bed and hovers there, hands outstretched like she doesn’t know what to do with them. 

“What?” She asks, panicked. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Cosette gasps, staring at her because all she can see is her dead body, her dull eyes. “Fine, just a dream.”

Eponine, ever so carefully, sets a hand on her shoulder and it’s blessedly cool against her overheated skin, but still warm. Alive. Unthinkingly, she reaches up a hand and grips Eponine’s wrist, seeking out the thrum of her pulse, concrete proof. 

“Bad dream,” Eponine remarks. “You have these a lot?”

“Only recently,” she says, sitting up more and releasing Eponine to wipe sweat off her brow. “Stress.”

Eponine eyes her. “Maybe you should try some Melatonin before bed or something.”

“Yeah,” she says. “Maybe.”

“You okay now?” Cosette realizes there are still voices coming from the other room. Grantaire and Feuilly must still be here. How embarrassing. 

“Yeah. I’m fine. Thanks.”

Eponine doesn’t look like she quite believes her, but she withdraws anyway, leaving Cosette alone. She wraps her blanket around her shoulders and picks her chemistry book up off the floor.

She won’t be sleeping again tonight.

* * *

A few days later, she mentions it to Marius. Not everything, not the horrifying, excruciating details, certainly not shooting him in the head, but the gist of it.

“Hmmm,” he says, stirring a pot of pasta. “Sounds like a stress dream.”

“Yeah,” she says, “but don’t you think it’s strange? How specific it is? And the timing?”

He reaches up, turns off the burner, turns to grab the colander from next to the sink. “What, do you think it’s a premonition or something like that? Do you believe in that sort of thing?”

“No,” she says defensively, and scrapes the garlic she’s been chopping into the pot of sauce. “I think it’s just strange. It’s been...well, I’ve just been thinking a lot about it. I can’t get it out of my head.”

“You’re just stressed about the protest. I felt the same way, last year. You know, you really don’t need to be as involved as you have been if you don’t want to be.” He dumps the pasta into the sauce, too, and gives it all a stir. “It’s been really helpful, but I don’t want you to feel obligated just because of...you know, us.”

“No,” she says. “It’s not you. I want to.”

“Okay,” he sighs, and starts spooning the pasta into bowls. “Just, try not to worry too much. It’ll all be fine, I promise.”

He hands her a plate and she opens her mouth to reply—to go further, to protest that it’s all really just too strange, that she dreamed him before she met him and maybe there _is_ something to pay attention to, here—but she’s interrupted by Courfeyrac and Combeferre, cheeks flushed from the cold outside, Courfeyrac exclaiming loudly over the delicious smell. Combeferre pulls a bottle of wine and a baguette out of his backpack and an impromptu dinner party results. Later that night, curled up next to Marius as they watch a nature documentary, she thinks about bringing it up again. It seems silly now, though, as she’s warm and comfortable and wrapped up in his arms. He’s right, she thinks. It’s probably nothing.

The dreams keep coming, though. Fall spirals forward, those beautiful orange leaves falling from the trees and gathering in piles of fire on lawns and in gutters, color leeching to brown. Grey skies and rain and mornings where she sees her breath on the way to class. Preparations continue, Les Amis buried in securing permits and holding nonviolent action trainings and debriefings with lawyers to go over how to deal with police and arrests. There’s a few dozen people who are planning on getting arrested by participating in the sit-in, but Enjolras assures them all that participation in the rally and march is fully legal. She notices no one’s promising they won’t get in trouble, though.

Courfeyrac shrugs when she asks him after the meeting. “It’s impossible to know what’ll happen. Obviously, we have all the permits we need to be there and everyone’s planning it as a nonviolent action. But when you’re working with multiple groups and expecting a lot of people, it’s hard to say for sure. Someone random could start tossing bricks, or the police could be aggressive. It’s not in the interest of those in power to allow for too much nonviolent disobedience, anyway. If shit starts, it’s usually on their end.” He claps her on the shoulder and grins. “It’ll be fine, though!”

A lot of people are telling her it’ll be fine, and she has an increasingly certain feeling it won’t. How’s she supposed to tell anyone that, though? _I just have a feeling. I’ve been having bad dreams._ No one’s going to listen.

To her surprise, though, about a week before the rally Marius comes up to her at lunch with a heavy look on his face and dark circles under his eyes and drops into the seat in front of her with uncharacteristic gloominess.

“What?” she asks, looking up from her limp cafeteria salad.

“Remember that dream you told me about?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“I—well, I had a similar one. I don’t remember the details like you do, but it was...a lot of us were dead, and it was...like, I knew it was because of the protest. It was something we thought would be fine, and we all ended up dying. It really freaked me out.”

“Yeah,” she says. “They’re pretty unsettling.”

He squints at her. “You’ve had more?”

She drags her fork through the clumpy ranch dressing. “Almost every night.” They seem less prominent when she spends the night with Marius, but sleeping alone she’s guaranteed to have one, maybe two if she manages to fall back asleep. Most of them aren’t as detailed as those first two, but all run along the same vein, leaving her paralyzed and terrified for the rest of the night, unsettled the next day.

She isn’t sleeping much, these days. She feels a bit like a zombie, floating through her classes, forgetting conversations as soon as she’s had them. Her father even remarked on it the last time they talked, how she sounded tired over the phone. She hadn’t known what to tell him.

“School’s just busy,” she’d lied, and he’d said he was proud of her. She hasn’t told him about Les Amis, about the rally, about anything.

Marius clears his throat and looks at her. “I’m...not feeling as good about the protest now. I’m sorry I brushed you off before. It’s...it is creepy.”

“Yeah,” she says softly. “I don’t...I still don’t really know if it means anything. But it is unsettling. And the timing. And now you’re having them, too.” She pauses, thinking. “I guess maybe you’ve been influenced by me telling you about them, though.”

“I don’t think so.” Marius taps his fingers on the table, nails clicking. “I might talk to Enjolras. There are other things that have happened during the planning process...groups pulling out, tip-offs about police presence…. Feuilly said he’s heard they’re going to have riot police stationed at the park and the capitol. It’s like the government is planning on it getting violent. Or they want it to. I know Enjolras is worried, anyway.”

“You think he’ll listen?”

Marius snorts, shrugs. “He won’t _listen_. But it might make him think. Maybe he’s had dreams, too. You never know.”

“Yeah,” she says. “I supposed you might as well try.” She’s not going to hold out a lot of hope, though.

* * *

Eponine’s leaning against the counter when she gets home, scowling as she waits for the kettle to boil. Cosette drops down at the table next to her and they’re silent for a moment, the burble of boiling water the only sound in the room.

Eventually, she manages to open her mouth. “I’m nervous about this protest,” she says, and immediately winces over how childish it makes her sound. It’s just a protest. Eponine’s been through more dangerous actions than this one, she probably thinks Cosette is just a coward…

To her surprise, though, Eponine just taps her fingernails on the counter, sighs, and says, “Me too.”

“Wha—really?”

Eponine nods again, looking troubled. The kettle screams, but she doesn’t move to fill her empty mug. “Yeah. I’ve been having these dreams.”

Cosette stares at her. “So have I,” she says softly.

Eponine meets her eyes. In the dim light of evening, her irises are so dark they might be black, deep like pools Cosette could drown in. “Do you know what color I was born without?” she asks.

Taken aback by the abrupt turn in the conversation, Cosette shakes her head. She knew Eponine could see with the full spectrum, and had assumed she’d either been born without a soulmate or suffered through the death of one. She’d never wanted to ask.

“Orange,” Eponine says, still maintaining eye contact. Cosette couldn’t look away if she wanted to. 

“Oh,” Cosette says. “That’s—”

“Your color,” Eponine finishes. “I know.” She pauses, breaks her gaze, turns to fill her mug with water and bobs the tea bag around for a moment before sighing deeply. “I saw it for the first time when I met Marius.”

“What?” Cosette says, because that doesn’t make sense, Marius is _her_ soulmate, he saw blue when he saw her…

“Oh.” She says, in understanding.

Unrequited. Very rare. More painful, people say, than having a soulmate who dies.

“Yeah,” Eponine says, still turned away. 

What’s she supposed to say to this? It’s horrible, tragic, and yet an ugly part of her rears up with satisfaction because that’s _right_ , Marius is _hers_ , not Eponine’s.

She quashes it down. “I’m sorry.”

Eponine snorts. “No, you’re not. It’s fine. We first met years ago, in middle school. I’ve had time to get over it.”

How do you get over that, though? How can anyone get over their soulmate?

“But—”

Eponine finally turns back and looks at her again. “When I met you, I knew. I don’t know how, but I did. I looked at you and it just seemed...familiar.”

“What do you mean?”

Eponine sighs again. “Do you want a cup of tea?”

“I—uh, I guess?”

Eponine turns away again and pulls another mug out of the cupboard, throws in a teabag, and fills it. She sets it in front of Cosette and takes a seat at the table in front of her. “Look, I don’t know how to explain it. I just feel like I recognized you from somewhere, for some reason. And my thoughts didn’t go straight to Marius, but I just felt like I needed to introduce you to my friends. And then, when you guys saw each other, it was like I wasn’t even surprised. I don’t know. It’s like I knew it would happen. And then—I don’t know. I’ve been having these dreams.”

“Dreams of what?” Cosette whispers, mind turning back to that dark, cold tunnel, her haggard father running towards her, Marius draped across his shoulders.

Eponine makes a face. “I don’t remember them when I wake up, usually. But they’re about us—all of our friends. It’s like we’re at a protest or something, and it goes south. And then, right before I wake up, I just see everyone lying on the street dead. Including myself.” She shuts her eyes, shakes her head firmly. “I know there’s more to it, but I can’t remember when I wake up. But it makes me unsettled. It just seems like a bad time.”

Cosette takes a sip of her tea and burns her tongue. “I’ve had strange dreams, too. Dreams like that.”

Eponine raises her eyebrows. “Oh?”

“I dreamed about Marius before I ever met him. He was hurt. I could hear gunshots. I’ve had lots of dreams about people getting hurt.”

Eponine taps her fingernails on the table. “Hmm. Strange. I don’t know, though, sometimes soulmates have linked dreams. Combeferre and Courfeyrac do, all the time.”

She shakes her head. “Maybe. It felt like a memory, though. Not just a dream.” It’s the first time she’s put that into words and she realizes suddenly how apt it is—waking from the dream, she felt like she’d remembered something she’d long ago forgotten, like a memory from childhood triggered by the sight of a picture book or the scent of a certain meal.

“Marius is going to say something to Enjolras,” she says dully. “I don’t think he’ll listen.”

Eponine snorts. “Of course not. He doesn’t even listen to reason, talking to him about dreams and feelings won’t get us anywhere.”

“We could just not go,” Cosette says, though she knows in her heart as she says it she won’t take her own advice. “We could skip it.”

Eponine shakes her head. “I couldn’t do that. Unless we can get the whole thing called off, I feel like I—I need to be there with them all. I wouldn’t want to leave them behind.”

“Yeah,” she agrees. “I know.”

They sit in silence for a long moment. Eventually, Eponine downs the dregs of her tea and stands, dumping her mug in the sink. “I’m going to bed. See you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow,” Cosette replies. She should go to bed soon, too, but instead she stays in the kitchen for a long time, watching the orange glow of the candle on the stove flickering off the walls. In the shadows creeping from the corners of the room, she could almost see ghosts.

* * *

He corners Enjolras after the final meeting before the rally, though he knows it’s probably fruitless. The sense of dread, the fear in Cosette’s eyes, the images clouding his dreams, Feuilly’s warning…

“Are you sure about this, Enjolras?” he asks softly. “We know there will be riot police. We know that the people we’re working with aren’t necessarily committed to keeping this peaceful and nonviolent. I feel like it could go south.”

Enjolras meets his eyes with a steady gaze. “It could.”

“Right. It could. And think about it, you’ve already been arrested this year, and so has Courf and Jehan and Bahorel and Eponine...what happens if you get arrested again? You’re on _watch lists_ , for god’s sake. What happens if someone gets _hurt_? What if someone who isn’t one of _us_ gets hurt, if it’s just some random person who we told to show up because it’s a good cause and things go badly?”

“That’s always a possibility,” Enjolras says. “No matter what the action is. That’s the risk we have to take to _change things_.”

“You’re saying you haven’t had any qualms. No weird feelings. No dreams.”

Enjolras looks up. “Dreams? What do you mean, dreams?” He laughs. “Like, premonitions? Come on, Marius.”

“Nothing? No worries at all?”

Enjolras wrinkles his nose. “No. This action has the same risks as any of ours, but if you’re asking if I’ve gotten some strange warning about it in my _dreams_ , I’ll have to disappoint you. If you’re scared, you don’t have to come.”

He grabs his bag and turns away, striding out the door and slamming it behind him. Marius stares after him.

He knows his friends well. He knows Courfeyrac doesn’t meet people’s eyes when he’s nervous. He knows Jehan raises one eyebrow when they’re flirting. He knows Eponine scowls when someone compliments her, even if she likes what they say.

He knows Enjolras wrinkles his nose when he lies.

* * *

The morning of the protest dawns bright and cold, a thin layer of snow on the ground that crackles under his feet when he leaves to meet the others at the park where the rally is. After the rally, they’ll march the eight blocks up main street to the capitol building. The park seethes with energy, packed with people holding signs and already chanting. A guy from the IWW is already standing at a podium, leading the chants. Marius worms his way through the crowd to the front, where he sees Enjolras’ red jacket sticking out like a beacon. Once he reaches them, Combeferre wordlessly hands him a thermos of coffee.

“God, thanks.” He takes a swig, warming his hands against it. “Sorry I’m late. Courfeyrac’s on his way, he’s helping Jehan with the signs.”

Enjolras just nods, stress evident in the set of his jaw. Combeferre smiles. “No worries. It’s just started. We had a bit of a stressful morning.” Then, leaning in close to Marius he whispers, “someone didn’t sleep last night,” and jerks his thumb at Enjolras.

“Shocker,” Marius mutters back, looking at the dark circles under Enjolras’ eyes.

Combeferre pulls out a sharpie. “Can I have your arm? I’ll write Jehan’s number—they’re who you call if you end up at the police station. You left your phone at home, right?”

“Of course,” he says, handing his arm over. 

A few minutes later, Cosette joins them, cheeks flushed from the cold and a handful of signs under her arm, trailed by Courfeyrac and Jehan. He takes her hand immediately and she grins up at him.

“You doing okay?” he murmurs, too low for Enjolras to hear.

She nods. “It’s happening. I think I’m kind of excited, honestly. I didn’t have any dreams last night.”

“Me neither.”

“I think everything will be fine,” she says optimistically and he nods, trying to believe her. Everything should be fine. Everything _will_ be.

And for a while, it is. The rally goes as planned, the speeches good, the energy high. Enjolras’ speech, predictably, is perfect, has the crowd thrumming with energy and cheers. Marius’ eyes and mind are stuck on the line of police on the side of the park, ostensibly for “protection”. They stay in place, though, and the rally finishes unhindered as the crowd starts to flow out of the park and up the street towards the capitol, chanting and waving signs. Enjolras and Combeferre are among those carrying the wide banner at the very head of the crowd and Marius and Cosette find themselves nearby, just behind them. Marius squeezes her hand and she grins and lifts her sign up high.

They make it six blocks—so close!—before he hears the first scream.

Cosette’s fingers tighten around his as she spins around, looking for the source of the noise. His stomach twists, something heavy in him remembering the screaming in his dreams.

More yells, the shatter of breaking glass, the scream of a car alarm. Ahead of them, Enjolras’ steps falter and he turns, eyes wide. “What’s going on?”

Combeferre, next to him, pushes his glasses up on his nose and looks out at the crowd. “Is that a broken window?”

Marius turns just in time to catch the arc of a brick sailing through the air, the impact as it hits the window of an antique store and shatters it, glass collapsing into itself and spraying all over the sidewalk. Bodies push against him as people simultaneously move closer to the window and push to get away. Everything, for a straining second, is silent, the entire crowd taking a breath. He locks eyes with Cosette, the blue of her irises wide and frightened.

Then everything descends into chaos. Another brick smashes another window, more car alarms go off, and the air fills with yelling and screaming. The police, just waiting for this to happen, move in on the crowd and people start running.

He loses Cosette almost immediately, though he’s trying desperately to hold onto her hand. She’s pushed in one direction, he in the other, tripping up onto the sidewalk, nearly falling. He’s kept on his feet by someone grabbing his arm in a tight hold, hauling him into the shadow of a tree. Enjolras, face tight with anger, peering out at the crowd in front of them.

He can’t help it. He really can’t. “I told you something would go wrong.”

“Shut up,” Enjolras says.

“I bet whoever threw that was a plant. A reason for the police to get involved.”

A muscle in Enjolras’ jaw twitches. “Maybe.”

“You _knew_ I was right!”

Enjolras turns to him, eyes flashing. “I don’t _know_ anything, and neither do you! Those dreams are just a coincidence, they don’t mean _anything!_ ”

“Ah,” Marius says, feeling vindicated despite the situation. “So you _have_ had dreams! Of what?” 

“Nothing.” Again with the scrunched nose. Marius is about to push him further when a cop in full riot gear makes eye contact with him from across the streets and starts moving towards them.

“Oh, shit.” He pushes against Enjolras’ shoulder, panic fluttering in his throat. “Come on, we need to _go_!”

But Enjolras is frozen, staring out at something in the crowd, still enough to be a statue if Marius couldn’t see his pulse fluttering at his throat. 

“Enjolras?” he asks, but before he can finish the word, Enjolras shakes off his hand and disappears into the crowd. 

“Shit,” he whispers to himself. In one direction: the police. In the other: a seething crowd of protestors.

He dives in after Enjolras.

It’s chaos. He can barely navigate through the crush of bodies, everyone running in different directions. Some people are angry, trying to get closer to the police, throwing tear gas canisters back towards them. Others are scared, running away. Tear gas explodes nearby and he coughs, eyes watering. He draws his scarf up over his mouth but it doesn’t help. He wonders where Cosette is, if she’s safe, and almost turns around to try to find her instead—but Enjolras is the one who really needs to get out of here. 

The confusion, the chaos, the yelling—it feels familiar. The street, the capitol building ahead with its sweeping lawn, the familiar buildings—it all seems overlaid by something else, something different. Like a photo negative covering over reality. Different buildings. A bright, sunny day instead of November’s chill. Cobblestones stained with blood. 

He shakes his head sharply. Now is not the time to start hallucinating. Whatever strange recollections are rolling in his brain need to wait until later, until he’s safe, until they’re all safe. Enjolras. He has to find Enjolras, and then they need to leave. 

Trying to follow or find anyone through the chaos is next to impossible, but thankfully Enjolras is easy to spot for his wild blond hair and bright red coat. Eventually he catches sight of the edge of the coat and dives through the crowd to get to it, shouldering people out of his way. 

“Enjolras, what the—”

He cuts himself off, stunned at what he sees. Enjolras stands wrapped around someone else, a tall, scruffy guy Marius vaguely recognizes as someone Eponine knows. He’s an art student, he thinks, and he’s positive Enjolras has never met him. He’s holding a sign that says **I CAN’T BELIEVE WE STILL HAVE TO PROTEST THIS CRAP** in one limp hand, dragging it on the ground, the other arm around Enjolras. They’re just standing there, like they’re the only two people in the world and not in the middle of a protest that’s gone to absolute shit. 

“What?” Marius says intelligently, and the guy glances over to him. Enjolras’ head remains firmly buried in the juncture of his neck and shoulder.

“I can see red,” the guy says, voice devoid of any emotion whatsoever, eyes wide. 

Marius takes two steps closer, avoiding a guy in an Anonymous mask who’s running straight for him. Slightly closer, he catches the words Enjolras is whispering—”I’m so sorry, I remember everything, I’m so sorry, I don’t want you to die with me, you could have survived...”

“He’s really upset,” the guy says, dropping the sign fully to the ground and bringing his hand up to rub a gentle circle over Enjolras’ back. “I’m not sure what he’s talking about, but…” he trails off, his hand tangling in the ends of Enjolras’ wild hair, staring down at him with an indescribable expression, and Marius finally gets it about a minute late.

Soulmates. 

“Oh,” he says. “You can see red.”

“He’s it,” the guy says. “I recognized him, even though I’ve never seen him before.”

“Right.” That seems to be a theme, lately. Then, “That’s wonderful, but we need to get out of here.” On cue, he looks across the street and locks eyes with another cop. “Like, now.”

“I know,” they guy murmurs, but he doesn’t really look like he’s heard, still staring down at Enjolras like he’s some kind of miracle.

“I mean,” he says, “Like, now?”

“Oh. Right.” The guy shakes Enjolras’ shoulder and asks, “what’s your name?” That shouldn’t be funny, but Marius’ nerves are frazzled at this point and he bursts out laughing. 

The two of them still only have eyes for each other. Enjolras looks up at the guy, tears staining his cheeks, and says “Enjolras” in what is possibly the quietest, most gentle tone Marius has ever heard coming out of his mouth. The guy smiles—it’s a good smile, teeth slightly crooked, dimples, eyes nearly hidden by the wrinkles—and replies, “Grantaire.”

“Grantaire,” Enjolras says wonderingly, and Marius steps forward to grab his arm and start physically dragging him away when a small, warm hand slides into his own. He almost jumps out of his skin and spins to see Cosette, eyes wide and a bloody scratch down her left cheek.

“Oh my god,” he says, a rush of relief so strong it leaves him lightheaded flooding through him, and he throws himself into her arms. “You’re okay.”

“Marius,” she says tightly into his ear. “I remembered something. I remember this. It’s like my dream. I knew it.”

“I don’t—” he starts, but trails off. Because. Because.

_Cobblestones stained with blood gunshots screaming the dead bodies of his friends his friends his friends_

“I think we’ve been here before,” she whispers and something inside him breaks open.

He remembers.

Enjolras in all his fiery passion, so similar to now; Courfeyrac taking him under his wing the same way he did last year; Grantaire a member of their group from the beginning, cynical comments from dark corners. He remembers Eponine’s little brother, Gavroche—he remembers his body. He remembers the barricade they built out of broken furniture, crates, overturned wagons, the tricolor flag. He remembers his uncertainty, not knowing if he would go join his friends because...because of Cosette. Because he was in love, and he didn’t want to lose her. He remembers, too, people dying as sickness swept through Paris, dirty water and no food, a cold, cramped apartment, empty pockets and hungry nights. 

He remembers

Eponine

His friend

Stepping in front of a bullet meant for him

Holding her in his arms as she bled and bled and bled and died

Handing him a bloodstained letter and telling him she loved him

He remembers stumbling over the bodies of his friends, remembers the pain of bullet wounds and the wooziness of blood loss, remembers the dark and the cold and a month of dreaming through fevers, of dreaming he was dead and in the afterlife with his friends, of dreaming he lost Cosette forever, and the cruelest—dreaming all his friends alive and laughing, drinking around the tables of the Musain. Waking to the sinking, sickening knowledge that they were all gone, that he’d survived when he shouldn’t have, he alone had been saved. 

He remembers wishing he’d died with them.

“Marius!"

Cosette comes back into focus in front of him, eyes wide, shaking his shoulders. “Do you remember? We need to get out of here!”

“Yes,” he whispers, but he can’t make his feet move to match his mind. “I remember.”

Cosette tugs on his hand. “What are they doing?” she gestures to Enjolras and Grantaire.

“They just found each other,” he manages through numb lips. “I think Enjolras remembers too.”

Cosette points at them, mouth twisting. “They died together. Holding hands.”

Something sick curls in Marius’ stomach. No wonder Enjolras is holding him like he’s afraid to let go.

Someone runs into him, jarring him forward into Cosette and as she steadies him the sounds of the protest filter back in. They need to leave. 

“Marius! Cosette!” Eponine runs up, looking panicked, and Marius reaches out for her without thinking, feeling her warm body between his palms. Not dead. Not dead. She gives him a strange look but doesn’t spare him anything past that.

“I’ve been looking for you! Most of the rest of us are out, why are you just standing here?”

Mutely, Cosette points towards Enjolras and Grantaire. Understanding floods Eponine’s face immediately. “I knew it,” she says. “I always thought, with Grantaire…but I could never get him to come to a meeting...” she trails off, turning to look behind them where a line of police advance, riot shields at the ready. 

“You can’t get arrested,” Cosette tells her.

“Neither can they,” she points again to Enjolras and Grantaire, who are finally looking at the world around them instead of each other. Grantaire looks panicked, tugging on Enjolras’ hand. Enjolras is just staring at the police with a dead-eyed look, like he’s not even planning on moving out of the way.

“Grantaire’s been in trouble a lot recently,” Eponine hisses. “He was homeless for a bit, got a few DUIs, some public intoxication stuff and resisting arrest. He’s definitely on their books, he’s fucked if they get him here, too.”

Marius thinks about his friends, dead. He thinks of himself, the lone survivor, who didn’t deserve it. He’d watched them die, before. 

He’s not going to let anyone get hurt today.

“Go,” he says, shoving Eponine bodily away from him and pulling Enjolras forward. Enjolras stumbles like he’s coming out of a dream, clinging to Grantaire, and Grantaire pulls him forward easily, Enjolras following like a lost puppy. “Let’s go!”

“Marius, what-"

Eponine cuts Cosette off by grabbing her hand and running. Grantaire looks at Marius.

“Follow her,” Marius says just as another tear gas can lands at his feet and a policeman yells “Stop!” Another policeman steps forward, eyes on Enjolras. “Isn’t that the leader? He was making a speech!”

Four of them move forward, headed straight for them. The tear gas explodes and Marius, about to turn away, to run, doubles over coughing, tears streaming down his face. Someone throws a rock at the line of police behind them and the world turns to chaos. Screams, shouts, police yelling and protestors yelling back. A policeman slams his baton down over some guy’s back as Marius is immobile, coughing into his hands, and the guy goes down and lies still. The policeman raises his baton for another blow and Marius, blinking away tears, darts forward without thinking and shoves the baton away as it comes down, throwing the policeman off balance. The guy on the ground blinks, groans, rolls over. Marius offers him a hand and hoists him up, still unable to breathe properly from the gas.

The guy, once he’s on his feet, runs. Marius takes off after him but he can’t see, can’t breathe, everything is noise and confusion.

Something hits him from behind and he goes down on his hands and knees. His hands are being pulled behind his back. He sees the boots of a policeman in front of him, running forward. He sees Enjolras’ red converse, coming towards him, Grantaire’s boots behind him. The policeman has a gun in his hand.

Enjolras is a known entity. The university doesn’t like him, the city doesn’t like him, the state doesn’t like him. Hell, he’s probably even on an FBI watch list or two at this point. Enjolras can’t get arrested. Enjolras can’t get _shot_. The police wouldn’t shoot him, would they? Not in the middle of a protest, not surrounded by other people, not _now_. Not when he’s just found his soulmate.

Gunshots and blood on cobblestones. The bodies of his friends.

In a burst of energy he wrestles his arms away and reaches out, grabbing for the boots in front of him. The policeman trips, falls forward, catches himself on his hands, and another weight bears down on Marius’ back.

“Are you resisting arrest?” someone growls in his ear and no, he hadn’t really meant to, but he knows better than to open his mouth when a cop asks him a question. Enjolras’ shoes are gone, the policeman he tripped getting to his feet, spitting curse words, gun no longer in his hand. He lets them zip tie his hands behind his back, shoving his face into the asphalt as they do so, lets them pull him to his feet and march him to a van parked down the street, the back already full of other protestors. They shove him in none too gently and he almost falls into someone’s lap before he steadies himself. His eyes are still streaming and he can’t clear them with his hands tied, so he blinks and blinks and blinks until his vision resolves somewhat and he sees who’s sitting across from him. 

“Joly?”

Joly nods, looking grim. “Are you okay? You’re bleeding.”

“I’m so fucked,” he whispers, the situation fully hitting him. “My grandfather’s gonna kill me.”

Joly shrugs. “At least it’s both of our first times. It won’t be too bad. Probably just a misdemeanor, a few fines.”

A few fines Marius won’t be able to pay because his grandfather will disown him. He’s not going to be able to hide the fact that he’s still participating in Les Amis now. 

He glances back towards Joly, who’s got dirt on his face and is holding himself carefully, like it hurts to sit. Guilt floods him. Typical, only thinking of himself, of his own small problems. “Are you okay?”

Joly shrugs and winces at the movement. “Fine. Got hit in the ribs. Hopefully just bruised.” He cracks a smile. “Don’t want a punctured lung or anything. Did you see any of the others?”

“Yeah, I was with Enjolras and Cosette and Eponine. I think they got away.” He swallows. “Enjolras just found his soulmate.”

Joly breaks into a grin and others around them turn to smile, too. Even in the current situation, it’s hard to be somber when faced with news of soulmates.

“That’s amazing!” Joly says. “Who?”

“Someone named Grantaire. Eponine’s friend, I think. Did you? See anyone else, I mean?”

Joly nods. “Most of them got away. Combeferre had his car, he got Courf and Feuilly and Jehan and Bahorel. I was with Bossuet and ‘Chetta, we got hit with some tear gas and I lost them. I hope they’re okay.”

“They will be,” he says softly. Then, “the policeman had a gun.”

“They all have guns,” Joly says sharply. “You didn’t see anyone get shot, did you?”

“Not that I saw.” He closes his eyes, gunshots and blood filling the space behind his eyelids.

“Hey,” Joly whispers, as one last protestor gets shoved in the back of the van and the door slams shut, siren wailing on as they lurch forward. He taps Marius’ foot with his own. “It’s gonna be okay. We’ve got a plan for when this happens, our friends will bail us out and we’ll have legal support. You have the phone number you need on your arm. It’ll be okay.”

“I know,” Marius says, trying hard to believe it. “I know.”

* * *

It makes her sound like a coward, but she’s not sure she ever needs to go to another protest again.

At first it was exhilarating. Surrounded by that many people, calling for justice, watching the speakers and the chanting and the _energy_. 

Then it all went to shit and she’s never been more scared in her life. 

Watching Marius—lovely, kind, innocent Marius—get tackled to the ground by riot police as she _ran away_ is a sight she’ll never forget, and one that she knows will feature in her nightmares for the rest of her life. Only Eponine’s arms around her, dragging her away, prevented her from running back and getting arrested right alongside him. That’s when she starts crying and from there on out everything is a confused jumble for awhile — Eponine dragging her through streets and alleyways until she’s somehow sitting in a car and then on Enjolras and Combeferre’s couch with a box of tissues on her lap as their apartment slowly fills up around her. Everyone’s loud, everyone’s arguing, people are crying, Enjolras sits next to her, shaking, his head buried in Grantaire’s shoulder — it’s all just too damn much and what the _hell_ was she thinking, getting involved with this?

Then a phone rings and the room goes silent, like someone hit the mute button on life, everyone frozen and staring at Jehan as they pull the phone out of their pocket and answer it. 

“Hello?”

A beat of silence. Two. Three. Then Jehan’s face relaxes and they smile. “You’re okay?” they ask.

Another beat, and Jehan actually laughs. “If you had a punctured lung you wouldn’t be talking to me on the phone. Marius is there?”

Cosette stares at them and when they nod and give a thumbs up to the room a wave of relief crests over her. She puts her head into her hands and breathes for the first time in what feels like hours.

“No worries,” Jehan is saying. “If they’re letting you out we can come get you. No, no, we have enough to post bail if we need to. But it’s misdemeanors, right? Oh, shit...well, we have legal counsel. Tell him it’ll be fine. The fines will just be higher. Okay. Okay. Someone will be there in an hour.”

Jehan hangs up. The entire room stares with bated breath.

“It’s Joly and Marius.” Across the room, Musichetta breathes a visible sigh of relief and puts an arm around Bossuet. “They just got Joly for a misdemeanor—disturbing the peace, but they have Marius on disturbing the peace, resisting arrest, and obstructing an officer.”

From the corner, Bahorel whistles. “Shit,” he says. “My boy doesn’t do it by halves. Misdemeanors?”

Jehan nods. “Sounds like it. Still. Obstructing an officer might cause some problems.”

Next to her on the couch, Enjolras finally lifts his head. His eyes are red. “He did that for me,” he says, voice ragged. “He tripped a policeman who was coming at us with a gun out.”

The entire room stares at him. Eventually, Courfeyrac says, voice heavy with disbelief, “ _Marius_ did?”

“A cop _pulled a gun on you_?” Combeferre asks, louder. 

“The gun was already out,” Grantaire says, the first time he’s spoken to anyone but Enjolras since they got to the apartment. “But he was coming straight towards us.”

Silence sits heavy, interrupted only by the thunk of Courfeyrac dropping his head down on the kitchen counter. 

“That could have been it,” Feuilly says after a moment, sounding stunned. “I mean, they know who you are, you’re all over police records. They knew you’d be involved in this because you helped get the permits, they’re sick of us causing trouble. They could have just...they could have just _done_ it and said you were attacking an officer and no one would have been able to stop it…”

“Yeah,” Enjolras says eventually. “I really owe him.” Grantaire puts an arm around him, rubbing his shoulder. 

“Well,” Jehan says, false cheer in their voice. “That didn’t happen. Someone needs to go pick them up. We shouldn’t need to post bail for misdemeanors, but bring the checkbook just in case. And we shouldn’t send anyone who will be recognizable. You,” they point at Enjolras, “Are never leaving this apartment ever again if I have anything to say about it.”

“I’ll go,” she hears herself say, and everyone’s staring at her, now. She blushes. “I mean, I’m not on file anywhere. And I’m pretty, like, average looking. I doubt anyone will recognize me from the protest.”

“True,” Courfeyrac says. “White and innocent.”

Jehan nods. “Yeah. You can take my car over.”

Walking into the police station is terrifying. She’s half afraid someone will jump out at her, yell “she was there!”, and arrest her. No one does, though. Instead, there’s a bored looking cop behind a desk and Joly slumped in a chair in the front room, knee bouncing. 

“Hey,” she says quietly and he jumps to his feet and wraps her in a tight hug. She hugs back, burying her face in his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

He pulls back. “I’m all good, all good. Need to get someone to take a look at my ribs but other than that, could have been worse.”

“Where’s Marius?”

“He’s still in the back, getting processed. They’re gonna let him go without bail, though, they’re still all just misdemeanors. It’ll be a few more minutes.” He takes her hand and guides her to a seat to wait.

“You’re okay?” he asks. She shrugs.

“Yeah, I’m fine. A bit freaked out, I guess. And, like…” she trails off, wondering if she should bring it up.

“I...have you ever had dreams? Strange dreams, like of your friends?”

“Oh, yeah,” Joly says casually. “All the time. Chetta, Bossuet, and I have shared dreams a lot. It’s how Chetta and I figured out we had a third soulmate. Bossuet and my colors are really close to each other, and when I met Chetta and saw teal, she saw orange. Didn’t realize she was still missing red until she dreamed it, even though she’d never seen it before.”

“I had dreams about us all dying. After a protest. And so, when things went south, I...I was pretty scared.”

Joly looks at her, dark eyes and serious expression. “Do you believe in reincarnation?”

Nobody’s brought that word up, yet, but she has to admit it’s been bouncing around in the back of her head. “Maybe,” she says.

He nods. “You know I’m Buddhist, right? We believe in reincarnation. And we don’t generally believe in a string of human reincarnations, one after another. You can reincarnate as anything, even in realms other than ours—godly, demigod, animals, ghosts….but you _can_ reincarnate as human, and sometimes you do. And with soulmates, there’s a lot of theories that your soulmate bond goes beyond this life. That you find each other again and again and again.”

“So...have you had these sorts of dreams? Or memories, I suppose.”

He nods. “I’ve had a lot of dreams of a lot of pasts. I’m not sure all of them are actual _memories_...I’m skeptical because it’s often said we should have no memories of our past reincarnations. But I know that in all my dreams, all my memories, ‘Chetta and Bossuet are there with me. And my other friends, too, more often than not.”

She thinks about the dreams. About the feeling of familiarity when she opened the door of her new dorm room and saw Eponine. Of her immediate commitment to Les Amis’ cause. Of dreaming Marius’ face before she ever met him, like she’d seen him before, like she already knew him. 

She thinks of the blazing orange of a sunset and wonders if orange was missing from her sight before, in that past life, or if Marius was a different color then. 

“Reincarnation,” she says. “Maybe you’re right. It makes sense, if you’re soulmates, that you’d be bonded forever. Different people, different lives, but still bonded.”

Joly shrugs, winces when it jars his ribs. “It’s a beautiful idea, belonging somewhere, with someone, so deeply that you find them in every life. Something to think about.”

A door at the other end of the room opens and Marius slumps out, looking exhausted. One side of his face is red and scraped and he walks like it hurts to move, but he smiles when he sees her. She jumps to her feet and is in his arms before he can get a word out, hugging him so tight he groans.

She lets go. “Sorry, sorry! Are you hurt?”

“No,” he reels her back in, tucks her head under his chin. “Just sore. It’s so good to see you.”

She leans her head into his chest, comforted by the thrum of his heartbeat. “You, too. I hear you got in big trouble.”

He grimaces. “Yeah. I might—well, I don’t want to think about it tonight. I just want to sleep.”

She presses a kiss to his lips. “Let’s get you two home.”

She drives them back to the apartment where they’re greeted by the cheers of their friends, by cookies Jehan stress-baked, by warmth and light and support. Sitting on an overstuffed chair with Marius later, nearly nodding off to sleep from the exhaustion of the day, she lets her gaze wander around the room. Joly, Musichetta, and Bossuet gathered in the kitchen, Musichetta doing dishes while Bossuet hugs her from behind and Joly leans on the counter, feet tangled in both of theirs. Combeferre and Courfeyrac on the couch, Courfeyrac’s head in Combeferre’s lap as he runs his fingers through his hair, laughing over some inside joke. Bahorel and Jehan in a pile on the floor, Feuilly and Eponine sitting on the windowsill, smoking cigarettes into the dusk. Enjolras and Grantaire, curled on the couch facing each other, talking quietly, Enjolras running his fingers down the knit lines of Grantaire’s green sweater like it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

Reincarnation or not, what a blessing they all found each other—in this life and others. What a blessing they’re all here.

She loves them all more than anything. How lucky she is, to be a part of this.

Cosette presses a kiss to Marius’ cheek and heaves herself out of the chair, making her way over to Eponine. When she gets there, Feuilly grinds out his cigarette on the bricks of the windowsill and gives them a smile before slipping away.

“Hey,” she says to Eponine, settling in Feuilly’s vacated spot. 

Eponine glances at her. “Hey.”

“How are you doing?”

Eponine lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “I’m alright. Intense day. I’m glad we’re all safe. How about you?”

She mirrors the shrug. “Same, I guess.”

They sit in silence for a moment, Eponine obviously waiting for her to speak again.

“I just wanted to say thank you, I guess,” she says. “For bringing me to that first meeting. For introducing me to everyone. For not hating me when, you know...with Marius.”

Eponine’s eyes flick to her’s, dark pools reflecting the glimmer of her cigarette. “It would be counterproductive to hate you. It wouldn’t change anything.”

“Yeah,” she allows. “Still. You could have kept me from meeting him. You could have stonewalled me, you could have decided not to introduce me to your friends. But instead you included me in every way, you made me feel welcome. And I...like you said, I really do feel like we all belong together. So I’m just...thank you.”

Eponine reaches across the space between them and takes her hand. Her fingers are cold. She squeezes slightly. “I think, before, I didn’t have a very good life. I wasn’t a good person, and I wasn’t happy. And this time around, I am. And I’m happy that you’re a part of it. Really. Don’t feel guilty for you and Marius. Okay?”

Cosette squeezes back. “Okay.”

Eponine turns away to look out over the city. This window faces west, and the sun is setting, brilliant streaks of pink and orange coloring the light clouds on the horizon. In the slant of the light, everything turns, briefly and beautifully, to gold.

“I never understood sunsets before,” she murmurs more to herself than Eponine. “I could always see the pink and the purple and the red, and it was pretty, but not as much as people always made it sound. But the orange is what turns it from pretty to breathtaking. I never knew.”

Eponine turns to her, bathed in the same gold as everything else, and smiles. “Well, now you do.”

“Yes,” she says, and fixes her eyes on the horizon as the sun bleeds away. “Now I do.”

* * *

Grandfather disowns him.

It’s not a surprise, but it still hurts. It still leaves him panicked and at a loss, unsure of how he’ll pay for rent, for school, let alone the massive fines he’s saddled with.

He’s not sure if he’s fully disowned, if he’s written out of the will and everything, but Grandfather stops depositing money in his account, stops taking his calls, blocks his number. He allows himself a few days to be sad about it—Grandfather is, after all, his last remaining family, and it hurts to be rejected. But this is what he signed up for, he reminds himself. He vowed to stand up for what he believes in, no matter what, and he did so, and these are the consequences.

Better to be disowned and penniless than in Grandfather’s favor and living against what he believes in. Besides, he would have been shoehorned into Grandfather’s law practice, working corporate, making money while throwing his morals to the wind. Now, at least, he doesn’t have to have the argument about going into labor law instead. That’s a freeing thought.

He’d been worried about jail time, but turns out nobody’s interested in sending him to jail. They end up dropping the disturbing the peace charges—for him and Joly, who gets off scot-free—and he’s just stuck with resisting arrest and obstructing an officer. Still a hefty fine, but he gets it halved by doing community service, which consists of helping out once a week at a local farm. He gets free veggies out of it, so it’s really not that bad. Les Amis chips in from their budget for legal fees and fines, and he works out a payment plan for the remainder, goes part time for spring semester, and lands a paid internship at a law office downtown over the summer. It works out.

In the end, despite the fear and the uncertainty and the sharp pain of missing Grandfather, he doesn’t regret it. He, of all of his friends, got out of an arrest and multiple charges in the best way possible. If Enjolras or Combeferre or Bahorel got arrested, they all would have certainly faced jail time. If he didn’t look the way he did—young, white, wealthy, and innocent—things could have turned out worse for him. There’s something powerful, he thinks, in using his privilege to shield his friends. At night, he still sometimes dreams of being the only one left alive, of sitting in a cafe that looks like the Musain, empty and abandoned, light streaming through bullet holes in the walls, waiting for friends who will never walk through the door. 

There will be more protests, he knows. There will be future opportunities to step into the line of fire and the next time none of them may come out as lucky. He doesn’t want to let his past life determine the present, though. He wants to believe that this time around, they’ll all live. This time around, they’ll get lucky. This time around, maybe they’ll win. 

Winning isn’t a one-time effort, he knows. But maybe winning is protest by protest, maybe it’s a law that’s changed, officials losing reelection campaigns. Maybe it’s him standing in court fighting for union rights, Enjolras sitting in the legislature one day writing the laws himself, Combeferre directing the state chapter of the ACLU.

He’s not sure, but he’s hopeful.

He’s hopeful because he has a future stretching out in front of him, and his friends are all part of it. _Cosette_ is part of it, standing at his side, hand in his own. He’s hopeful because he found his soulmate and together, they can get through anything.

Blue is the color of hope, he thinks. Bright and open and peaceful. And he’s reminded of it every time he looks up at the sky, every time he looks at a patch of flowers in summer that were previously a wash of grey, every time he looks into Cosette’s endless eyes.

Blue, the color of hope, of the future, of Cosette.

Blue, the color of his soul stitched together and whole.

Blue.

  
  


_History repeats itself. Somebody says this._

_History throws its shadow over the beginning, over the desktop,_

_over the sock drawer with its socks, its hidden letters._

_History is a little man in a brown suit_

_trying to define a room he is outside of._

_I know history. There are many names in history_

_but none of them are ours._

-Richard Siken

**Author's Note:**

> The theory of soulmates in this fic comes from Plato’s The Symposium. The Richard Silken poem is ‘Little Beast’ from Crush. Thanks again to [Kay](https://grande-air.tumblr.com/) for beta-ing and coming up with the title, and [Sam](https://caluette.tumblr.com/) for the ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL art and the wonderful ideas. Give them both a follow! 
> 
> The escalation of the protest in this fic is dramatized, but not so far from the truth of what happens at many marches and protests when tensions are high and the police are involved. Efforts to suppress the voice of the people are as common now as they were in 1832. If you’re annoyed or saddened by the state of the world and want to do something to make a difference, [all](https://iww.org/) [the](https://www.dsausa.org/) [organizations](https://www.sunrisemovement.org/) [referenced](https://aflcio.org/) in this fic (aside from Les Amis, of course) are real and active throughout the USA, and in some cases the world. Many are doing important organizing work in the face of this pandemic, and could use your help. Clink the links to get involved.


End file.
